Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to vehicle guidance systems.
Description of the Related Art
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are often physically small, with little room available for electronic systems, such as flight management systems and navigation systems. In an attempt to accommodate the small volume available for the flight management systems and navigation systems, one conventional approach has been to integrate all of the components of the autopilot with the components of the flight management system in a single integrated package to reduce weight, size, wiring, and required connectors.
While closely integrating the components of the autopilot and flight management system may yield a small size and minimal cabling, it may also greatly decrease flexibility in terms of aircraft supported, payloads supported, power conditioning provided and physical and electronic interfaces to other aircraft components. As a result, a given flight management system is conventionally designed to support a narrow class of aircraft with similar volume, weight, and power availability for the flight management system and for payloads, and with very similar missions and payloads.